My RV Whole Foods Kitchen

Email This Story to a Friend

Your friend's email address:

Your email address:

Message (optional):

"How can you cook in such a small kitchen?" is a question I am asked quite often when friends and family learn we moved out of our house to live full time in our 5th wheel trailer. Many people believe that when traveling (or living) in an RV, most food will be canned and packaged, heated up quickly, and served on paper plates. Although that might be true for a short camping trip into the woods without refrigeration, electricity, or running water, for those of us who live full time in our rolling homes, a fully equipped kitchen is a must.

When we were shopping for our rig, high on our "must have" list was ample storage space to accommodate our whole foods kitchen. There were many things that had to be let go when transitioning from a fixed dwelling to a 5th wheel, but scaling down the kitchen was not on the chopping block (so to speak). Although the stove, oven, and refrigerator are somewhat smaller than those found in traditional homes, they still function the same way, and it is still quite possible to cook whole foods, from scratch, including using specialty equipment as desired, or required.

My whole foods RV kitchen includes a Vitamix blender; food processor; juicer; crockpot; spice grinder; and electric knife sharpener. I have two pressure cookers (medium and large) that double as soup pots and pasta cookers, as well as my life long favorite bean cooker, a cast iron kettle. I have a full set of non-stick skillets and sauce pans, a taco shell maker, loaf pans, muffin tins, cookie sheets, and two full size ceramic casserole dishes. For chopping and shredding, we have a set of chef quality knives and a mandoline.

The big deep drawer in the kitchen functions as my dry goods pantry, with dry beans and grains, pastas and lentils, flakes and granules all stored in reusable zip lock bags. My fifty varieties of herbs and spices hang on a custom made rack (thanks to my dear husband) that holds all the bottles of various shapes and sizes. Even our refrigerator is usually able to hold a week's worth of fresh foods, so we aren't running to the store every couple of days.

And although I had to reduce my cookbook library by about 75%, I still manage to travel with my 50 favorites, so there is no worry that I will ever run out of nourishing vegan recipes to prepare in my whole foods RV kitchen.